


These hands are running out of things to hold

by ASheepsLife



Series: Losers Bingo 19/20 [3]
Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Cougar's not in a great headspace, Don't copy to another site, Lil angsty, M/M, Pining, but he will be able to heal, coming in from the cold (kinda?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:26:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22978354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASheepsLife/pseuds/ASheepsLife
Summary: After Max' escape from the Port of L.A., Jensen and Pooch decided their families took priority over continuing the hunt for him. Five years later, Cougar, Clay and Aisha have managed to bring Max down.Now, Cougar hopes to return to a life of his own - and to Jensen.
Relationships: Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez/Jake Jensen, pre-slash - Relationship
Series: Losers Bingo 19/20 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561063
Comments: 22
Kudos: 89
Collections: Losers Bingo 2019/20





	These hands are running out of things to hold

**Author's Note:**

> Have a last-minute entry. It felt a little slapdash while writing lmao; forgive me if it reads as such as well.
> 
> After writing this I noticed the premise is similar to [JezebelGoldstone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JezebelGoldstone/pseuds/JezebelGoldstone)'s [Four Important Things](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8108302). Whoops? Definitely go check that one out, too, it's wonderful. No infringement intended.
> 
> Fill for my new beginning bingo square.
> 
> Title inspired by The Amazing Devil's 'Two Minutes'.

Standing underneath the awning of an artisanal bakery, already closed for the day, Cougar watches through the windows of Haverton Electronics as Jensen closes up shop, chatting animatedly with an astonishingly blue-haired kid that Cougar's recon has told him also works at the shop. They look like they might have a hard time fitting in in small-town New Hampshire and more likely than not Jensen’s taken them under his wing. Cougar doesn’t want to know what kind of outfits the two of them are running from the back of that store. 

They move towards the door, and across the street, Cougar shrinks back further into the shadows. The faint jingling of the bell over the door reaches his ears, then the sound of Jensen’s laugh. Cougar’s heart lurches painfully in his chest, which can’t be due to hearing Jensen’s voice for the first time in almost five years because that would be ridiculous.

The ache in his chest persists as he watches Jensen and his charge say their goodbyes and head in opposite directions. If the past three days are anything to go by, Cougar knows where Jensen is going, so he follows at a distance.

As expected, he ducks into the same bar he had the last few days, where he spends enough time to have a beer, but not enough to be meeting someone. He also never leaves with anyone.

Cougar stands outside, trying to convince himself that the prospect of being in the same room as Jensen is not making him nervy like not much else has for a long goddamn time.

He's never been nervous around Jensen, not even after he'd realized how terribly, hopelessly gone he is on the man. Forget sweaty-palmed crushes or wet-dream want; Cougar’s been dealing with the utter, inescapable certainty that he needs Jensen in his life for years and yes, that includes the till-death-us-do-part way.

(He can't even pinpoint when exactly that happened. One day, he'd looked at Jensen sitting in front of his computer in nothing but his boxers, boots, and a pirate hat, and knew that he’d somehow become absolutely integral to Cougar’s happiness.)

Death had never seemed long in parting them in the service, and certainly not after they'd been burned. He'd always figured they'd go out together - the Losers didn't leave anyone behind. Worst came to worst, Cougar'd make sure he didn't outlive Jensen for long.

Then, Jensen - and Pooch - had decided that taking down Max wasn't worth risking their families for, and Cougar had understood - hell, he'd been fully prepared to go the Port of L.A. with Clay and Roque alone. But he couldn't abandon Clay, not after Roque. At that point, he'd still been burning to finish what Max had started, because a lunatic psychopath with the means and ambition to kill a lot of people needed to be stopped, because of Roque, because of twenty-five Bolivian children.

So he and Clay and Aisha had gone on to hunt and steal and kill until they’d finally caught up with Max and put a bullet in his head, and now it’s been five years and here he is stalking Jensen at his regular haunt, trying to bring himself to go in.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to see Jensen. He does.

The question is. Will Jensen want to see him?

He doesn’t know if this is a good idea either way. Probably not. But it’s not like he has much of a choice. Where else is he going to go except back to New Hampshire? What else is he going to do except return to Jensen?

Cougar pushes open the door and follows Jensen inside.

He was in two days ago, after Jensen had left, so he knows the layout. Jensen’s sitting at the bar, talking to the barkeeper, but showing no interest in any of the patrons.

Not letting himself get sidetracked by the familiar lines of Jensen’s animatedly moving shoulders, Cougar slips around the tables, taking a seat at the bar where it curves around one of the wooden pillars. The spot is halfway hidden, and undesired besides thanks to being fairly cramped against the wall.

It offers a great vantage point of Jensen down the bar, eyes now trained on the TV behind it. He looks relaxed, mellow, but otherwise exactly the same as when Cougar had left him in this very town five years ago, right down to the dorky glasses.

He himself has changed, he knows. The longer hair is just the most obvious of it.

When the bartender comes over, he orders one beer for himself and, before he can think better of it, another for Jensen.

The barkeep scrutinizes him for a moment when he calls Jensen by his name, and he’s glad that Jensen’s got people looking out for him, even if he himself has not once given his surroundings more than a cursory glance. But then, he has no reason for suspicion; he’s left that life behind.

Cougar’s about to become the rude reminder.

He nods his thanks when the bartender brings over his beer, then watches as he approaches Jensen with his, watches the surprise at being bought a drink cross Jensen’s face, watches as he looks over and spots Cougar sitting at the end of the bar.

God, how could he have forgotten how emotive Jensen can be? He is drawn in, inevitably, by the whirlwind of emotions playing rapidly over Jensen’s face as he slips from his barstool and approaches, eyes bright and incredibly blue.

He comes to a stop next to Cougar, who tracked his progress across the bar but doesn’t dare get up from his seat for fear of doing something stupid like burying his face in Jensen’s chest and not letting go.

He ends up looking at Jensen out of the corner of his eyes, sees the incredulous smile play along Jensen’s lips for a moment before vanishing again, taking some of the light out of his eyes with him. Jensen moves restlessly, seemingly undecided what to do with his hands, the serene impression from before gone, dispelled by Cougar’s appearance.

Jensen finally takes a seat next to Cougar, body angled towards him, like he might disappear again if Jensen takes his eyes off of him.

Cougar almost misses the start of Jensen’s words over the sound of his own wishful thinking.

“Well, you’ve finally done it. You’ve rendered me speechless. Me! Speechless. Bet you never thought you'd see the day, huh? Never thought _I’d_ see it, to be honest. But man, is it good to see you. It really is.”

On his last sentence, Jensen’s voice goes quiet, soft, like maybe he hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

Cougar refuses to read anything into it.

Or tries to.

Before the silence between them can get awkward, the barkeeper brings the two glasses Jensen had abandoned when he’d come over.

“Thanks, Zeke.”

Jensen waits until Zeke is out of earshot before continuing, something impossible to read in his voice.

“So it’s done, huh? He’s really dead.”

Cougar doesn’t see the need to confirm the assumption. He wouldn’t be here if that weren’t the case.

“How’d it happen?”

Cougar takes a slug of his beer.

“I shot him.”

An impossible shot it had been, too. Furthest he’d ever made. The couple of close shaves Max had had thanks to them had left him even more of a paranoid bastard than he’d already been, meaning the opportunity that did present itself put Cougar at a stupid distance to try and cover Clay, who’d insisted on facing Max down personally. Since it had been neither inconceivable nor unprecedented for any of them to lose their cool when face to face with Max, Cougar hadn’t been the biggest fan of that plan. In the end, though, as he’d locked Max through his scope, focused calm had settled over Cougar like an old cloak worn familiar, guiding his hand steady as it's ever been. Rather than wait for Clay’s desire for biblical revenge to fuck them all over, he’d made the call himself.

It had almost been anticlimactic.

“For that alone I’m buying you another drink,” Jensen’s voice cuts into Cougar’s recollection, never mind the fact that he has barely started on his first. “Actually, here,” Jensen goes on, pushing his own full beer in Cougar’s direction, “help yourself to this one. Not that I didn’t appreciate the gesture. Very dramatic.”

Cougar tips his hat in an attempt to match the light mood Jensen is trying to set. Not very convincingly, it seems, for Jensen falls silent again, studying Cougar openly. His eyes take in the hat, a new acquisition necessary after a daring escape on - or rather in - the Rio Caquetá, the hair going past Cougar’s shoulders even messily tied back as it is, the scar on the back of his right hand that winds up his arm nearly all the way to his elbow underneath the long sleeve of his shirt. Like he’s familiarizing himself with these parts of Cougar the origin of which he hadn't been there to witness. (Before, every change had been a coevolution.)

He reaches up and lightly flicks the brim of Cougar’s hat.

“This new?”

Cougar wants to believe Jensen would take up his place within Cougar’s personal space again so seamlessly, but in the next moment Jensen withdraws his hand as though scalded, like he doesn’t think he’s permitted that kind of familiarity any more. Cougar has no idea how to tell him how wrong he is.

“So,” Jensen says, fiddling with the glass in his hands, and Cougar _hates_ how stilted he sounds. “You sticking around? For a while?”

His question is careful, like he’s trying to avoid hurting Cougar. Or trying to avoid getting hurt.

“If...You want me to?”

That sounded way more hesitant than Cougar had meant it to.

"No, actually. I haven't seen you in five years, so I'd like you to leave immediately for another five."

That is exactly the fear haunting Cougar, and even the sarcasm dripping from Jensen’s voice can’t dispel it.

“Whoa, hey. Hold up.”

Apparently noticing how close to home his remark had hit, Jensen makes the time-out sign, turning more fully towards Cougar.

“You think I don’t want you around?”

 _Yes_ , is what Cougar doesn’t say. _You have a life here, with your family. What could I bring into it but the ghosts of the death dealt at my hands?_

“I’m not...good to be around.”

"Oh - what, and I’m the pinnacle of likability?” Jensen scoffs. “Come on. You know there's no one who fits us like us."

That was before, Cougar wants to say. Before Jake got out of the game while he still could and Cougar stayed on to become embroiled in an ever more perverted version of it that's left him unfit for anything else.

With the army, it was a job he could put aside, for the most part, whenever Jensen took him to New Hampshire. But the personal turn it had taken has woven violence into his very being so tightly he fears there's no separating one without unraveling the other. Leaving that life behind leaves him lost, no idea who to be, how to be, the only thing left to do now to appeal to Jensen and hope to find grace.

Jensen nudges Cougar’s knee with his own, watching him intently.

“Hey. What’s going on?”

If he had a whole lifetime Cougar wouldn’t be able to find the words for the state he’s in.

“I left.”

“Yeah, to finish what we started.”

Cougar shakes his head.

“I left you. And Beth and Jess.” There it is. The inescapable regret. “Should have stayed.”

“You had a job to do,” Jensen counters. “ _We_ had a job to do. If anything, I’m the one who left you.”

There is regret thick in his voice, too.

“I left you guys short another pair of hands. I mean, Jesus, Pooch had a newborn kid, of course he was gonna stay. But me? If I really wanted to protect the girls, I’d have helped you hunt down Max. What good was I in New fucking Hampshire?”

Cougar can’t stand the self-recrimination.

“You had reason to stay.”

“I’d say stopping a megalomaniac wannabe Bond villain is a pretty good reason to keep going.”

“Wanting to get even isn’t.”

“You know the destruction he could’ve caused,” Jensen insists. “He was literally an evil supervillain, and you put a stop to his machinations. That has to count for something.”

_But what was the cost?_

He doesn’t know if it was the right thing to do, in the big picture. He doesn’t know if it makes him a bad person that he wishes he hadn’t done it, that he doesn’t care about the big picture, that the only thing he cares about, the only thing that seems to matter at all, is whether he still is someone that can be welcomed back into Jensen’s life, into his home. Into his heart.

“Really should’ve come with you,” Jensen says to his glass before he turns to look at Cougar. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”

Cougar’s not about to forgive him for something that needs no forgiveness.

“Nobody held it against you.”

“Except me.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot.”

Jensen raises his glass.

“Thanks, man.”

And there it is again, that spark of their old familiarity that makes the bleakness surrounding him stand out all the more starkly.

Cougar takes another sip of his beer, wishing, not for the first time, that he’d gotten something stronger.

Jensen blows out a breath.

“All right. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.” He knocks back the rest of his drink. “What say you we head over to my sister’s?”

For a moment, Cougar doesn’t comprehend Jensen’s offer - and it must show, for Jensen’s bluster gives way to uncertainty.

“Unless you don’t - didn’t you say you were staying?”

“Are you sure they want me there?”

He hadn’t meant to say that, and he has to look away as understanding dawns on Jensen’s face, terribly soft.

“Are you kidding me? Beth would be over the moon to see her Tio Carlos again.”

He says it like it’s that easy to pick up where they left off, like he’s still part of their family, unquestioned.

Cougar drains the rest of his own beer and stands, heading toward the door, suddenly in dire need of fresh air.

***

Turns out, the Jensens do pick up where they left off.

As soon as Jensen lets them into his sister’s house, he calls out, “Hey, look what cat I dragged in!” Beth sticks her head out of the kitchen doorway, takes one look at the two of them, and launches herself at him with a cry of “Tio Carlos!” And Cougar stands there, a twelve-year-old wrapped around him (God, has she grown), and has to look away from Jensen’s warm _I told you so_ look.

By now, Jess has come out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, and she gives Cougar a hug, too.

“It’s good to see you,” she tells him, and if she is the slightest bit reserved he understands. She’s always been more observant of what her brother means to Cougar than Jensen himself. She's right to be suspicious of his reliability.

They sit down to dinner, and Beth informs him that she’s planning on taking Spanish next year in school, and he’s just as welcome in the Jensen family as he's always been and all of a sudden it’s too much. The familiarity that had been so painfully missing overwhelms him and he has to get out. Not looking at anyone, he mutters an excuse and stumbles through the back door.

He takes refuge in the tree house in the garden, the tree house that he and Jensen had built for Beth one summer, letting his legs dangle over the side of the opening, and breathes the cool October air until his heartbeat stops pounding in his ears.

He hasn’t been sitting there long when Jensen climbs up after him, sitting down next to him. Jensen doesn’t say anything, like he knows his presence is reassurance enough. It's new, this silence.

Eventually, though, Jensen breaks it. He’s still Jensen, after all.

“Not used to our brand of insanity any more, huh?”

"Just glad to be back," Cougar replies after a brief pause, like that isn’t the understatement of the century.

“Yeah?” Jensen asks softly, and when Cougar looks at him there is so much quiet _hope_ in his gaze Cougar doesn’t think he could’ve found his voice if he tried. As if there was ever any goddamn chance Cougar wouldn't want to come back.

"Glad to have you back." 

Jensen claps a hand on Cougar's shoulder, and perhaps it lands higher than intended, perhaps he'd always meant to slide it up to curl around the nape of Cougar's neck, his palm a warm weight against the starved skin. He doesn’t break eye contact, and Cougar doesn’t even have his hat to hide behind.

"No more leaving, yeah?"

Fighting an incredulous laugh, Cougar shrugs _where the hell else would I go_ at him.

The smile that breaks over Jensen’s face is small, but it’s the most beautiful thing Cougar’s seen in his entire damn life.

"Glad we're on the same page."

And they are, leaning forward as one until their foreheads come to rest against each other and Cougar knows with utter, inescapable certainty that he gets to keep Jensen in his life.

He gets to come home.


End file.
